Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  Just after we had done so, and were exulting in it, the second war came. It was not quite so much out-of-the-blue as in 1914. We had had warnings: there had been Munich; but we had listened to Chamberlain’s reassurances, and we had thought then that when he said, ‘Peace in our time’, it might be the truth.

  But Peace in our time was not to be.

  PART X

  THE SECOND WAR

  I

  And so we were back again in wartime. It was not a war like the last one. One expected it to be, because I suppose one always does expect things to repeat themselves. The first war came with a shock of incomprehension, as something unheard of, impossible, something that had never happened in living memory, that never would happen. This war was different.

  At first, there was an almost incredulous surprise that nothing happened. One expected to hear that London was bombed that first night. London was not bombed.

  I think everyone was trying to ring up everyone else. Peggy MacLeod, my doctor friend from Mosul days, rang up from the east coast, where she and her husband practised, to ask if I would have their children. She said: ‘We are so frightened here–this is where it will all start, they say. If you can have the children, I’ll start off in the car to bring them down to you.’ I said that would be quite all right: she could bring them and the nurse too if she liked; so that was settled.

  Peggy MacLeod arrived next day, having motored day and night across England with Crystal, my godchild, who was three years old, and David, who was five. Peggy was worn out. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without benzedrine,’ she said. ‘Look here, I’ve got an extra thing of it here. I had better give it to you. It may be useful to you some time when you are absolutely exhausted.’ I have still got that small flat tin of benzedrine: I have never used it. I have kept it, perhaps as an insurance against the moment when I should be utterly exhausted.

  We got organised, more or less, and there we sat, waiting for something to happen. But since nothing did happen, little by little we went on with our own pursuits and some additional war activities.

  Max joined the Home Guard, which was really like a comic opera at that time. There were hardly any guns–one between eight men, I think. Max used to go out with them every night. Some of the men enjoyed themselves very much–and some of the wives were deeply suspicious as to what their husbands were doing under this pretence of guarding the country. Indeed, as months passed and nothing happened, it became an uproarious and cheerful gathering. In the end, Max decided to go to London. Like everybody else, he was clamouring to be sent abroad, to be given some work to do–but all anyone seemed to want to do was to say: ‘Nothing could be done at the present’–‘Nobody was wanted.’

  I went to the hospital at Torquay and asked if they would let me work in the dispensary there to freshen up my knowledge in case I should be useful to them later. Since casualty cases were expected all the time, the chief dispenser there was quite willing to have me. She brought me up to date with the various medicines and things that were prescribed nowadays. On the whole it was much simpler than it had been in my young days, there were so many pills, tablets, powders and things already prepared in bottles.

  The war started, when it did start, not in London or on the east coast, but down in our part of the world. David MacLeod, a most intelligent boy, was crazy about aeroplanes, and did a great deal towards teaching me the various types. He showed me pictures of Messerschmitts and others, and pointed out Hurricanes and Spitfires in the sky.

  ‘Now have you got it right, this time?’ he would say anxiously. ‘You see what that is up there?’

  It was so far away it was only a speck, but I said hopefully it was a Hurricane.

  ‘No,’ said David, disgusted. ‘You make a mistake every time. That is a Spitfire.’

  On the following day he remarked, looking up at the sky, ‘That is a Messerschmitt coming over now.’

  ‘No, no, dear,’ I said, ‘it isn’t a Messerschmitt. It’s one of ours–it’s a Hurricane.’

  ‘It’s not a Hurricane.’

  ‘Well it’s a Spitfire, then.’

  ‘It is not a Spitfire, it’s a Messerschmitt. Can’t you tell a Hurricane or a Spitfire from a Messerschmitt?’

  ‘But it can’t be a Messerschmitt,’ I said. At that moment two bombs dropped on the hillside.

  David looked very like weeping. ‘I told you it was a Messerschmitt,’ he said, in a voice of lament.

  That same afternoon, when the children were going across the ferry in the boat with nurse, a plane swooped down and machine-gunned all the craft on the river. Bullets had gone all round nurse and the children, and she came back somewhat shaken. ‘I think you had better ring up Mrs MacLeod,’ she said. So I did ring up Peggy, and we wondered what to do.

  ‘Nothing has happened here,’ said Peggy. ‘I suppose it may start any time. I don’t think they ought to come back here do you?’

  ‘Perhaps there won’t be any more,’ I said.

  David had been excited over the bombs, and insisted on going to see where they had fallen. Two had fallen in Dittisham by the river, and some others up on the hill behind us. We found one of these by scrambling through a lot of nettles and a hedge or two, and finally came upon three farmers, all looking at a bomb crater in the field, and at another bomb which appeared to have dropped without exploding.

  ‘Dang it all,’ said one farmer, administering a hearty kick to the unexploded bomb, ‘regular nasty it is, I call it, sending those things down-nasty!

  He kicked it again. It seemed to me it would be much better if he did not kick it, but he obviously wished to show his contempt for all the works of Hitler.

  ‘Can’t even explode properly,’ he said with disparagement.

  They were, of course, all very small bombs, compared to what we were to get later in the war–but there it was: hostilities had begun. Next day there was news from Cornworthy, a little village further up the Dart: a plane there had swooped down and sprayed the school playground when the children were out at play. One of the mistresses had been hit in the shoulder.

  Peggy rang me again, and said she had arranged for the children to go to Colwyn Bay, where their grandmother lived. It seemed to be peaceful there, at any rate.

  The children departed, and I was terribly sorry to lose them. Soon afterwards a Mrs Arbuthnot wrote to me and wanted me to let the house to her. Now that the bombing had started, children were being evacuated to various parts of England. She wished to have Greenway for a nursery for children evacuated from St. Pancras.

  The war seemed to have shifted from our part of the world; there was no more bombing; and in due course Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot arrived, took over my butler and his wife, and established two hospital nurses and ten children under five. I had decided that I would go to London and join Max, who was working there on Turkish Relief.

  I arrived in London, just after the raids, and Max, having met me at Paddington, drove me to a flat in Half Moon Street. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said apologetically, ‘it is a pretty nasty one. We can look around for something else.’

  What slightly put me off, when I arrived, was the fact that the house in question stood up like a tooth–the houses on either side of it were missing. They had apparently been hit by a bomb about ten days before, and for that reason the flat was available for rent, its owners having cleared out quickly. I can’t say I felt very comfortable in that house. It smelt horribly of dirt and grease and cheap scent.

  Max and I moved after a week into Park Place, off St. James’s Street, which had once been rather an expensive service flat. We lived there for some little time, with noisy sessions of bombs going off all round us. I was particularly sorry for the waiters, who had to serve meals in the evening and then take themselves home through the air raids.

  Presently our tenants in Sheffield Terrace asked if they could give up the lease of our house, so we moved back in.

  Rosalind had filled in forms for the Womens’ Auxiliary Air Force, bu
t she was not particularly enthusiastic about it, and thought on the whole that she would prefer to go as a landgirl.

  She went for an interview with the W.A.A.F. and showed herself lamentably lacking in tact. When asked why she wanted to join she merely said: ‘Because one must do something and this will do as well as anything else.’ That, though candid, was not, I think, well received. A little later, after a brief period delivering school meals and doing work in a military office somewhere, she said she thought she might as well join the A.T.S. They weren’t, she said, as bossy as the W.A.A.F. She filled up a fresh set of papers.

  Then Max, to his great joy, got into the Air Force, helped by our friend Stephen Glanville, who was a Professor of Egyptology. He and Max were both at the Air Ministry, where they shared a room, both of them smoking–Max a pipe–without ceasing. The atmosphere was such that it was called by all their friends ‘the small cat-house’.

  Events happened in confusing order. I remember that Sheffield Terrace was bombed on a weekend when we were away from London. A land-mine came down exactly opposite it, on the other side of the street, and completely destroyed three houses. The effect it had on 48 Sheffield Terrace was to blow up the basement, which might have been presumed the safest place, and to damage the roof and the top floor, leaving the ground and first floors almost unharmed. My Steinway was never quite the same afterwards.

  Since Max and I had always slept in our own bedroom, and never went down to the basement, we should not have suffered any personal damage even if we had been in the house. I myself never went down to any shelter during the war. I always had a horror of being trapped under-ground–so I slept in my own bed no matter where I was. I became used in the end to raids on London–so much so, that I hardly woke up. I would think, half drowsily, that I heard the siren, or bombs not too far away.

  ‘Oh dear, there they are again!’ I would mutter, and turn over.

  One of the difficulties with the bombing of Sheffield Terrace was that by this time it was difficult to get storage space anywhere in London. As the house now was, it was difficult to get into it through the front door and one could only get access to it by ladder. In the end, I prevailed upon a firm to move me, and hit upon the idea of storing the furniture at Wallingford, in the squash court which we had built a year or two previously. So everything was moved down there. I had builders in attendance ready to take out the squash court door and its framework if necessary–and this they had to do because the sofa and chairs would not go through the narrow doorway.

  Max and I moved to a block of flats in Hampstead–Lawn Road Flats–and I started work at University College Hospital as a dispenser.

  When Max broke to me what he had already known, I think, for some time, that he would have to go abroad to the Middle East, probably North Africa or Egypt, I was glad for him. I knew how he had been fretting to go, and it seemed right, too, that his knowledge of Arabic should be used. It was our first parting for ten years.

  Lawn Road Flats was a good place to be since Max had to be away. They were kindly people there. There was also a small restaurant, with an informal and happy atmosphere. Outside my bedroom window, which was on the second floor, a bank ran along behind the flats planted with trees and shrubs. Exactly opposite my window was a big, white, double cherry-tree which came to a great pyramidal point. The effect of the bank was much like that in the second act of Barrie’s Dear Brutus, when they turn to the window and find that Lob’s wood has come right up to the window-panes. The cherry-tree was especially welcome. It was one of the things in spring that cheered me every morning when I woke.

  There was a little garden at one end of the flats, and on summer evenings one could have meals out there, or sit out. Hampstead Heath, too, was only about ten minutes’ walk away, and I used to go there and take Carlo’s James for walks. I had the Sealyham with me because Carlo was now working in a munition factory and unable to have him there. They were very good to me at University College Hospital: they let me bring him to the dispensary. James behaved impeccably. He laid his white sausage-like body out under the shelves of bottles and remained there, occasionally accepting kind attentions from the charwoman when she was cleaning.

  Rosalind had successfully not been accepted for the W.A.A.F. and various other kinds of war work, without settling, as far as I could see, to anything in particular. With a view to joining the A.T.S. she filled up a large number of forms with dates, places, names, and all the unnecessary information officialdom has to have. Then she suddenly remarked: ‘I tore up all those forms this morning. I am not going to join the A.T.S. after all.’

  ‘Really, Rosalind!’ I said severely. ‘You must make up your mind about things. I don’t care what you do–do exactly the sort of thing you fancy–but don’t keep starting to do things, then tearing forms up and changing your mind.’

  ‘Well, I’ve thought of something better to do,’ said Rosalind. She added, with the extreme reluctance that all young people of her generation seem to have in imparting any information to their parents: ‘As a matter of fact, I am going to marry Hubert Prichard next Tuesday.’

  This was not completely a surprise, except for the fact that the date was fixed for Tuesday of the following week.

  Hubert Prichard was a Major in the regular Army, a Welshman; Rosalind had met him at my sister’s, where he had come originally as a friend of my nephew Jack. He had been down once to stay with us at Greenway, and I liked him very much. He was quiet, dark, extremely intelligent, and owned a number of greyhounds. He and Rosalind had been friends for some time now, but I had rather given up the idea that anything was coming of it.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Rosalind, ‘I suppose you want to come to the wedding, Mother?’

  ‘Of course I want to come to the wedding,’ I said.

  ‘I supposed you would…But really it is a quite unnecessary fuss, I think. I mean, don’t you think it would really be simpler for you and less tiring if you didn’t? We’ll have to get married up at Denbigh, you know, because he can’t get leave.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I assured her. ‘I’11 come to Denbigh.’

  ‘You are sure you really want to?’ said Rosalind, as a last hope.

  ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. Then I said: ‘I’m rather surprised that you told me you were going to get married, instead of announcing it afterwards.’ Rosalind blushed, and I saw I had touched upon the truth. ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘Hubert made you tell me.’

  ‘Well–well, yes,’ said Rosalind, ‘in a way. He said, too, that I am under twenty-one still.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘you had better resign yourself to my being there.’ There was something oyster-like about Rosalind that always made one laugh, and I couldn’t help laughing now.

  I travelled with Rosalind to Denbigh by train. Hubert came and picked her up at the hotel in the morning. He had one of his brother officers with him, and we went to the Registrar’s office, where the ceremony was performed, with the minimum of fuss! The only hitch in the whole proceedings was that the aged Registrar flatly refused to believe that Rosalind’s father’s name and title were correctly styled: ‘Colonel Archibald Christie, C.M.G., D.S.O., R.F.C.

  ‘If he was in the Air Force, he can’t be a Colonel,’ said the Registrar. ‘But he is,’ said Rosalind, ‘that is his proper rank and title.’ ‘He must be a Wing-Commander,’ said the Registrar.

  ‘No, he is not a Wing-Commander.’ Rosalind did her best to explain that twenty years ago the Royal Air Force had not yet come into being. The Registrar continued to say that he had never heard of it, so I added my testimony to Rosalind’s, and finally he grudgingly wrote it down.

  II

  So time went on, now not so much like a nightmare as something that had been always going on, had always been there. It had become, in fact, natural to expect that you yourself might be killed soon, that the people you loved best might be killed, that you would hear of deaths of friends. Broken windows, bombs, land-mines, and in due course flying-bombs a
nd rockets–all these things would go on, not as something extraordinary, but as perfectly natural. After three years of war, they were an everyday happening. You could not really envisage a time when there would not be a war any more.

  I had plenty to keep me occupied. I worked two whole days, three half-days, and alternate Saturday mornings at the Hospital. The rest of the time I wrote.

  I had decided to write two books at once, since one of the difficulties of writing a book is that it suddenly goes stale on you. Then you have to put it by, and do other things–but I had no other things to do. I had no wish to sit and brood. I believed that if I wrote two books, and alternated the writing of them, it would keep me fresh at the task. One was The Body in the Library, which I had been thinking of writing for some time, and the other one was N or M?, a spy story, which was in a way a continuation of the second book of mine, The Secret Adversary, featuring Tommy and Tuppence. Now with a grown-up son and daughter, Tommy and Tuppence were bored by finding that nobody wanted them in wartime. However, they made a splendid come-back as a middle-aged pair, and tracked down spies with all their old enthusiasm.

  I never found any difficulty in writing during the war, as some people did; I suppose because I cut myself off into a different compartment of my mind. I could live in the book amongst the people I was writing about, and mutter their conversations and see them striding about the room I had invented for them.